Chapter 21: One Roll of the Die
Chapter 21: One Roll of the Die
Privacy in Eastbridge is a luxury they haven’t yet worked out how to bill for. What they have is the drying yard behind the laundry block — a concrete strip between two walls, hung with wet grey uniforms, out of the floodlight arc for about six metres. I put myself in the dark end with the sheets swaying in front of me and my back to the wall.
One charge. One roll of a die I don’t get to look at.
The call picks a band first and a person second. It doesn’t know I’m in debt. It doesn’t know I need a way over a wall. It might reach Liora’s world; it might reach somewhere that has never heard of any of us.
Liora would tell me the drying yard is a terrible extraction point.
I found I was almost smiling.
I activated the call.
[Blind Call activated.]
Something opened in my chest — the new sense catching it, the Anchor taking the strain where three days earlier there had been nothing to take it — and the pressure went out past the wall, past the hum of the barrier, into a distance with no direction in it.
[Reach check complete.]
[Eligible Grade: B.]
[Summon selected.]
[Physical manifestation initiated.]
No name yet. No identity panel. That information would not appear until manifestation began.
Then the far side of the bridge bled through, and I nearly went down onto the concrete.
Stone breaking — not one impact but a continuous grinding collapse, close, as though a wall the size of a street were coming apart just past my shoulder. Metal striking something that rang wrong under the blow, over and over, as if what was being hit were not solid the whole way through. Men shouted in a language I had never heard and could not parse a syllable of, and it made no difference; terror does not require translation. Further off, the churn of a crowd forcing itself through a narrow place — hundreds of feet, a cart wheel, children crying in that thin exhausted way that means they have been crying a long time already.
And under all of it, still coming, a great many throats that had never belonged to anything human.
Then a woman’s voice cut across the noise. Short orders, spaced, each landing on top of a fresh crash of stone. She was not behind the line; she was in it. I could hear the effort between the words, and the wet catch in her breathing that meant she was hurt and had decided not to be interested in that yet. Her voice never rose into panic. It stayed low and level and absolutely certain, and men were still obeying it in a place where everything else had already fallen apart.
I didn’t speak. I don’t think I could have.
Something on that side registered me anyway. Her attention arrived across the bridge like a hand laid flat on my sternum — sharp, immediate, the awareness of a commander who has noticed one more thing in a night already full of them and has no time at all to wonder what it is.
Her words came through in my own language. Nothing else did.
"Unknown reinforcement, protect the final gate. The civilians are still crossing."
Then something enormous came down on stone behind her, and the sound of the world she was standing in changed.
The connection snapped tight before I could speak.
I backed through the wet uniforms, one hand searching behind me for the maintenance door the laundry crew never latched. My shoulder found it. The door gave, and I fell backwards into a pump room three metres by four—a dead boiler, a floor drain, and one dead bulb overhead.
The air in the middle of the room split open.
She came through mid-swing.
She wasn’t set down; she arrived carrying momentum, sword already travelling in a flat brutal arc that ended a hand’s width from the boiler casing and screamed off the metal in orange sparks. Her boots skidded. Her breathing was enormous. For a full second she stood there with her blade up and her weight forward, waiting for an impact that never came, and I watched her whole body register the silence.
Her armour had been beautiful once and wasn’t now — the left pauldron sheared away, the breastplate scored deep across the ribs, a fracture through the plate at her hip that was leaking steadily onto my floor. She looked twenty-eight, tall and powerfully built, with a woman’s full chest, narrow waist, and strong hips held close beneath fitted mail and ruined plate. Long, muscular legs braced under the armour despite the blood running down one thigh. Dark hair was plastered to her face with sweat and something darker, framing high cheekbones, a firm mouth, and a long shallow cut along her jaw. Even half-dead, she was striking enough that attraction registered before survival shoved it aside. Her eyes swept the room once, cataloguing the door, the drain, the boiler, and me, in that order.
"Where is the gate?"
Not a question. Her voice was what it had been through the connection — low, level, certain — and hoarse underneath it.
"There isn’t one here."
"Where are the civilians?"
"Still there. Still at your gate." I put both hands up where she could see them. "You were pulled into another world."
Her sword came up again, its point settling beneath my chin.
"Send me back. Now."
"I can’t."
The point pressed close enough that swallowing felt dangerous.
"Choose your next words carefully."
"I didn’t choose you. Blind Call did. It reached your world and brought you here automatically. I can’t reverse it, and after you return the charge takes three days to recover." I forced myself to keep my voice low. There were guards less than a minute away if she shouted. "The manifestation lasts about thirty minutes. When it ends, you return to the exact place and instant you left. No time passes there. Your wounds, memories, and anything that belongs to your manifestation stay real."
"That is not possible."
"I know how it sounds."
"You do not." The sword didn’t lower. "Four hundred people are crossing that gate. Thirty of my soldiers hold a breach that cannot be held. If this is a spirit’s trick, I will find a way to kill you for it before it ends."
"Then check. Whatever it is you can feel — check whether the way back is still there."
Her eyes changed. On my side the bridge stayed lit and anchored, the way a rope stays taut while there’s weight on the far end. Whatever version of that reached her, it stopped her. The sword came down fifteen degrees.
"...It is preserved," she said slowly. "My position is preserved."
[Summon Grade: B]
[Race: Human.]
[Age: 28]
[Native Advancement: Unresolved.]
[Manifested Level: 4]
[Raw attributes and energy capacity synchronized to host level.]
[Manifestation Remaining: 29:42]
Desire: 68/100
Trust: 1/100
Resonance: 1%
Sixty-eight Desire. One Trust.
Apparently, Charisma could make a woman attracted to me while she held a sword beneath my chin. It could not make her believe a word I said. Good to know.